


Birth

by teShara



Category: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Ancient Rome, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teShara/pseuds/teShara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Hunter is born and an agreement is made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maharetr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/gifts).



She was a long way from home, in a depressing place where the marshes and cloudy skies seemed to envelop the land. The drooping, twisted trees looked sickly and land smelled of decay. She wrinkled her nose and tried not to gag at the stench.

The boy standing next to her dropped to his knees when he was hit in the back of the legs with the butt of a spear. His hands sunk into the soggy ground and disappeared under a thin film of dirty water. The soldier that had hit him sneered.

“It will be here! We must drain the land and make a solid foundation!” His voice rang out clearly. “Irrigation should start over there!” He pointed to an area far from where the girl was standing. “And it should run back here! We set up camp now and start digging tomorrow!”

She bit back a groan. More water. It never seemed to end. Even on land.

She couldn’t remember where she was from. She was ripped from her dead mother’s breast and placed into service for the empire before she could even walk properly, but she considered herself lucky. Most of the others were dead. She had seen her father lose his head and her brothers fall from wounds made from sharp bronze spears. She had heard her sister’s wail abruptly stop when she was thrown into a barrel of rainwater. She had watched the others with her wide, brown eyes, and had missed nothing.

She was thin, and tall for her age. Wrapped in furs, the soldiers didn’t immediately identify her as a girl. When her furs finally rotted away from her body they had given her a sheet and a pin to wear, but it did almost nothing in weather like this.

She fought back the urge to cry. She had seen what happened to girls that cried. They were made to cry more, until their cries became screams and the others prayed the gurgle that signaled death would come quickly.

The general made a decision on where to set up their camp, and she found herself walking back several miles, in the direction they had come. Some of the soldiers had lined up the carts near the edge of a cliff as a sort of wind break as others walked about, testing the quality of the ground before they began digging.

Her arm was grabbed and she was led over to a group of slaves who were opening barrels and starting cooking fires. She didn’t even look up to see who had grabbed her, it didn’t matter anyway.

She worked quickly, picking up words here and there from other people. Most of the slaves spoke different languages, but they had found ways to communicate with each other while they worked. Boil rabbit. Chop onion. Stir pot.

She had been separated from the last of survivors of her clan several weeks ago. No one spoke her native language now, but she was making an effort to learn her captor’s tongue. 

She kept her head down and worked quickly. Fingertips slid lightly over her shoulder as a soldier walked by. Her eyes flicked to him although she kept her head down.

He wasn’t too old. His legs looked strong and he had curly hair the color of dirt. He glanced over his shoulder at her and she quickly looked down, pretending she didn’t see the cruelty in his eyes. A look that made her want to drop the board of food and run into the bog.

But she couldn’t. She knew about the bogs and their sinkholes that would swallow a man up faster than he could scream. Lights that led travelers off the paths and to their deaths. A high-pitched, screaming noise that came out of the darkness on some nights, rolling over the hills on the cold wind.

She could not run. She didn’t know this land. She did not want to die in the bog, scared and alone.

It could not be her. It would have to be him.

-=-

More slaves arrived, and prettier girls with them. She didn’t see the cruel-looking soldier for some time. 

The work progressed.

Days turned into weeks and months. Several seasons passed and still she worked. Cooking. Cutting rock. Carrying loads. Washing clothing. Tending animals. Fortifying the crossings for a river they had uncovered. Covering the drainage ditches and making them into proper sewers. Building roads. Erecting bath houses. Settling.

Their settlement grew larger, bringing in civilians. People that wanted to be there, rather than people who were collected along the way to build the empire.

The water ran clean and the supplies were arriving regularly. Walls went up and people spread out. Life became more comfortable, but it all tasted bitter on her tongue.

“Better to marry a soldier,” she had heard one woman tell a girl in hushed tones. “Then your children will be born citizens. Catch one while you are still young and pretty.”

Their talking quieted down as they realized she was nearby, but still she watched everything.

She had taken to covering herself in layers of stiff fabric, cutting her hair off as quickly as it grew. Her counterparts were happy with the improved living conditions and were happily adapting, but not her. Her fingernails were always dirty, her arms bruised from working with the heavy rock that had built the city. Her limbs became hard from work, and although there was very little sun, her skin was still tawny, as if the bleak landscape couldn’t suck that last bit of life from her.

She worked in silence, running over words from her native tongue through her head so she wouldn’t forget them. 

With time, the people began to learn the ways of this strange new land, leaving the confines of the settlement and out into the surrounding area to look for food or fields to farm, and she with them.

She had a talent for snares, easily catching small game. More than enough for herself, the cooks couldn’t help but noticing.

She blushed at the nicknames people gave her, but she knew more about the land than they did. Where the rabbits liked to make their dens and where badgers buried themselves away. Nests of bees high up in the trees, and which stones snails liked to gather on in the dim light of the morning.

She was on her way back to the settlement, back to one of the many kitchens that had cropped up, when he stepped out of a cropping of trees and onto her path, a spear in his hand and his breath heavy with the smell of wine.

His eyes were wide, and blue. They seemed to look through her and she felt a wave of cold run through her body. She fought back the instinct to run and instead returned his stare.

He slowly lowered the tip of his spear and snagged it on the bottom of the bags she was carrying. He jerked it and it ripped, spilling out snails all over. She tried not to flinch as she felt one of them sliding across one of her feet.

He raised the tip of the spear to her belly and to the knot she carefully tied each morning. With another jerk of his spear the cord was cut and she felt her clothing slipping. He helped it along with his spear, carefully pulling the fabric and furs from her body.

She stood before him, naked. An empty sack in her hands and sandals on her feet.

His face broke into a cruel grin.

“Run.”

She turned and ran as fast as her feet would take her, dodging through brambles and tripping as the heavy, wet ground sucked at her feet.

A wild whoop went up and her heart skipped a beat. It was one thing to hide from one soldier, but how many were after her? Where were they hidden?

Her knowledge of the land left her and she ran blindly into the wilderness.

She stopped to catch her breath in a clearing. Most of the noise was far away. She had made it look as if she were headed towards the ocean by throwing rocks and breaking some choice twigs and branches. Then she doubled back and shimmied up a tree, running along thick branches when she could, and leaping through the air like a cat from tree to tree.

She took a deep breath and let it out. Tears of anger sprang to her eyes. What sport was there in an unarmed, nude girl? If she had decided to set her snares last night she would have had a small knife on her, but she hadn’t.

She looked around for anything to use as a weapon and her eyes fell on a broken branch lying near a tree. She picked it up and felt the heft in her hand.

Then she lowered her eyebrows and began to take slow, deliberate steps away from the clearing.

-=-

Clouds gathered thickly overhead, only letting patches of stars shine through. It seemed as if even the moon was afraid to show it’s face. A soldier steadily approached the same grove of trees, a sack slung over a shoulder and a dripping, bloodied branch in one hand. The center of the grove had a wide, flat spot, almost as if it were made for staging a drama. When the sack is overturned, several heads roll out and hit the ground with a series of dull thuds.

Then, nothing. It was if the world had stopped.

No wind rustled through the leaves on the twisted trees, no small animals scurried through the underbrush. Clouds obscured the moon. Even the insects seemed to fall silent.

Complete darkness enveloped the grove. It was everything and nothing, comfort and terror, agony and ecstasy, a cloak where a soul was both everyone and no one. 

There was a creak. It started out small, but grew quickly. 

A cloud slid over the sky, parting itself against the strength of the moon, as if it wouldn’t—couldn’t hide what was about to happen.

A woman stood beside the bloodied figure. She was beautiful and terrible, power radiating from her every pore. She wore a long white dress, it’s hem torn and crusted with mud. Her feet bare stood on a patch of moss. “Remove your helm.”

It was an order, there was no doubt. From a voice that sounded both young and ancient.

The order was obeyed and the woman stared for a moment, as if considering a problem.

“What is your name?” the woman barked.

“They call me Hunter,” the once-girl said.

“And this is because you hunt,” the woman said levelly. “Today you had a good hunt, it seems.”

“With your help.” Hunter inclined her head. “Thank you.”

The woman stared for a moment more. “Why do you thank me?”

“I know how to read the land, to find sacred places. I found this place and it gifted me with a weapon that flew true. I brought it my trophies.”

This seemed to satisfy the woman.

“And this is all you want? To give me your trophies?” She looked down her nose at Hunter, an impressive feat for someone several heads shorter.

“I am in your debt,” Hunter said plainly.

“Yes, you are.” The woman said as her eyes flickered from Hunter’s feet to her eyes. “How does that feel?”

“Like a choice,” Hunter said simply and the other woman threw her head back and laughed.

“You are so unlike the others!” She peered at Hunter curiously. “There may be potential, but you must swear yourself to the Seven Sisters and forsake this land forever.”

“I will,” Hunter said quickly.

“You make your decisions in haste.”

“I made my decision before I came here.”

The woman appraised her coolly, then nodded. “Remove the remnants of this world.”

Hunter gritted her teeth against the cold, but shed her stolen uniform, laying it neatly on the ground before she slipped her sandals off and laid them on top of the breastplate.

She stood, bathed in blue moonlight, nude and holding a bloody branch. The woman smiled. She waved a hand and there was screaming in the forest. Hunter recognized them. Rabbit. Stag. Squirrel. Vole. Rat.

Furs flew through the air towards Hunter before they began wrapping themselves around her. There was a flash of light and Hunter swore she saw more shadows in the clearing than there should have been. She looked down at herself.

She was wearing a bloodstained suit of skin and fur. Her feet were clad in sturdy boots, thick pieces of leather layered on the bottom to cushion her footsteps. She flexed her arms and the supple material flexed and slid over her skin.

She sniffed the air and the musky smell of wild animals overwhelmed her. She could no longer smell herself, or the faint hint of scent the soldiers liked to have their cloaks dusted in. She also smelled dirt, bog water, and moss.

She felt smooth wood in her hand and her eyes ran over the spear in her hand. It was the perfect weight for her and the silver tip was dripping with blood.

“It is beautiful,” Hunter said.

“Almost as much as you,” the woman said with a quirk of her lips.

Hunter looked at the woman. Her face unreadable.

The woman turned and waved her hand. There was a creak and a large, twisted tree began untwisting itself. It unfolded it’s layers and stood up straight and tall, it’s branches reaching up to the sky as if it were trying to brush the moon.

The bark parted and revealed an arched doorway. Golden light and the sound of music faintly filled the clearing.

“This is your world now, and I am Serpentine of the Seven Sisters,” the woman said as Hunter began taking small steps towards the archway. It had stairs leading down and the scent of cooked food wafted out of it. Hunter’s mouth watered.

“You will sleep in our home, partake of our food, and serve us with honor.”

“I will,” Hunter promised.

“Then enter your new world,” Serpentine said solemnly. “Walk with your head tall, for today you are a citizen of the Place In-Between Places. Today you are truly Hunter.”

Hunter felt an unfamiliar ache in her face as she approached the portal. She lifted a hand to her face, her fingers exploring unfamiliar territory. It was then that she understood why this was.

She was smiling.


End file.
